


inception precluded by imagination

by spock



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Pre-Series, Role Reversal, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-21 15:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12460287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: Bernard creates a host to take the place of someone lost to him long ago.





	inception precluded by imagination

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thymesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thymesis/gifts).



Bernard watched as the host came online, waiting for its optical systems to register its surroundings before he spoke. "Hello," he said. "I'm Bernard."

The host's face was passive. It blinked a few times. "Hello, Bernard."

"I'm going to call you Robert, if that's alright with you."

Something in Robert's eyes shifted for a moment. Bernard dropped his own gaze to the tablet that rested in his lap, checking Robert's system activity. Nothing had spiked. Bernard had a bit of a reputation for humanizing the hosts, and Robert was one of the newer models, their best yet. Bernard supposed that there wasn't much harm in projecting a little of his own humanity now and again.

"Robert seems as good a name as any, Bernard."

 

* 

 

For a while now, Bernard had felt as if he was losing time. There were gaps in his day, missing pieces lingering around the edges of his memory that hinted at the dissociative.

Eventually he had gone to one of the therapists the company retained and received an overly long lecture on how it wasn't normal for someone in his position to shoulder as much weight as he did. He needed to learn how to dictate tasks, was essentially the gist of what he was told. It seemed to be some variety of foul mark on his character that he hadn't in all of his years as Park Director.

It hadn't always been that bad. He used to spend much more time in the Worlds. In the beginning he had spent weeks there, combining the odd vacation with field research. Bernard had found that he was at his most productive away from the daily politics of interacting with employees and instead entrenched with the hosts. There was nothing like seeing the realities of his updates firsthand, in the environment in which they were due to be experienced.

That wasn't possible now. Not with Delos sniffing around. Each board meeting came with the announcement that William was accumulating more and more stock; Bernard knew that he had to keep his nose to the grindstone or risk being forced out of his own company. There had been no other he could trust but himself, in that regard. Not anymore. Not since —

Well. Arnold had never gotten along with people much. It never seemed worth the risk. People were so fragile. If they didn't fail you then they would leave you, oftentimes neither of which by their own volition.

Hosts were Bernard's sort of company. Consistent, full of endless possibility, free from the tragedy of time.

And so he'd made Robert. Robert was as perfect a partner as Bernard could have ever dreamed of, which Bernard supposed was the point.

He had started Robert off as something of an overly-qualified personal assistant, and had quickly realized that the skills he had outfitted Robert with were wasted on such things. Robert had been far better suited for a more managerial role, and so Bernard promoted him to the Head of the Programming Division without much fanfare.

The promotion was a quiet one, some part of Bernard deciding to keep Robert's status as a host a secret from the rest of the department. He'd only meant to keep it to himself for a day, perhaps a week at most, to see if any of the staff would be able to tell what Robert was on their own. One week turned into two turned, and Bernard decided to keep the knowledge to himself for as long as he could.

It had taken about the same amount of time for Bernard to see free time appearing in his schedule again, a rarity in the twenty years since he first opened the park, unheard of in the past five.

Even with all that it was Robert did, somehow the host still found time to act as Bernard's assistant. Robert would enter his office with a report in one hand and a saucer balancing tea in the other. There were times when Bernard awoke on the couch he kept relegated to the farthermost wall of his office, when he knew for a fact that he had fallen asleep in his chair. It was there Robert would be sitting, checking over whatever project it was that Bernard had been working himself to exhaustion over.

They were at the point now where sometimes Robert would enter Bernard's office with a blanket folded over his arm, as if it was normal for the head of a company to be relieved of his duties in the same way an overnight shift worker might be. Bernard would journey over to the couch on his own volition, bemused as Robert took the time to tuck him in like the fussy English butler Bernard had programmed him to sound like on a whim, a bit of self-indulgence that he had never felt the need to rectify.

With Robert there, Bernard finally had the time to go back into his Worlds. To take a break.

Instead, Bernard found that he no longer wanted to. 

 

*

 

"Why did you name me Robert?"

There were times that Bernard looked at Robert and saw an older soul, a more distinguished, more weathered vision of Robert.

It was what Robert deserved to be, by anyone's measure. A Robert that Bernard might've known in a past life, one long forgotten, a kinder reality than the one in which Bernard inhabited. Then he would blink, and there his Robert would be again, young and flushed with the fresh blood of simulated life. Younger still if Bernard considered Robert's activation date rather than the age he had been built to be.

"It suits you."

 

* 

 

Robert had been hovering around the edges of Bernard's office the entire day. Bernard hadn't thought anything of it. It was something Robert was prone to doing, time and again, whenever he thought Bernard wasn't taking adequate care of himself. It was a personality trait that the therapist had insisted any assistant he'd hired have. The look on their face when Bernard reported back a few days later that he'd opted to build instead of hire had been a particular delight.

"You look stressed," Robert said.

The surety of it made Bernard laugh. "I haven't been stressed for months, Robert. Not since you got here."

Robert adjusted the hem of his waistcoat, eyes focused on something just off to the left of where Bernard was sitting. "Alright then," he said. "You look like your heart could do with some stress." 

 

*

 

The room is hot and filled with sound. Bernard does his best to focus on the uncomfortability of it. It's been so long. And this is Robert, his mind insists. _His_ Robert.

Robert, who had all be demanded that Bernard put his on glasses before dropping to his knees. Robert, tucked under Bernard's desk, between Bernard's legs. Robert, who Bernard can see clearly through the glass surface, with his lips stretched wide as they spread around the length of Bernard's cock. Robert, eyes locked with Bernard's throughout it all, refusing to look away.

 

* 

 

"This was a nice interlude, Bernard, but I think it's time for me to be getting back to work now." Robert had spoken in a tone Bernard had found himself getting used to recently. Slightly demanding, vaguely human.

Bernard had been tinkering with Robert's code, continuing forward with his efforts to fake spontaneity, randomness. For a while he'd been kicking around the idea of enabling hosts with the means to gain some form of sentience. He hadn't been ready to test it on the other hosts quiet yet, but the minor updates he'd been deploying to Robert seemed to be working better than he could have hoped. There had been an idea niggling at the back of his mind, accessible in every way but the one he needed.

Bernard walked across his office until he was standing behind Robert. He placed a hand on Robert's lower back and did his best to sound romantic. "I think we're both done for the day, don't you?"

There had been a sad look on Robert's face as he turned to face Bernard, distant and longing. Robert sighed and shifted his weight. The bend of his spine pressed into the support of Bernard's palm. His head listed to the side, forehead brushing against Bernard's temple. "That's enough, Bernard."

Something inside of Bernard seized up. He blinked a few times to clear his vision, suddenly gone as cloudy as his mind felt. He could hear the click of Robert's shoes as he walked across the room, listened to Robert picking something up off the table. Bernard turned to look at him, glasses slipping down his nose.

Between one blink and the next Robert aged at least forty years. Transformed from his Robert to the one that Bernard would catch a glimpse of sometimes, older and weathered and so very lonely looking.

Bernard felt an intense sense of knowing. It hadn't been a new revelation, but rather one that he had discovered before, somehow, and forgotten.

"This was one of our better runs," the older Robert said. "Thank you for the reprieve, Bernard."

And then it all went black.


End file.
